Guiding Your PhDs to Nonacademic Careers

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 13:17 -- dougk

More faculty are accepting and promoting nonacademic career alternatives for their graduate students and postdocs. But for some faculty without extensive industry experience or contacts, it’s difficult to offer advice and counsel to these students. I've put together a workshop which provides information and tools for faculty who want to mentor their PhDs as to the opportunities available and additional skills required for a successful non-academic job search.

Some of the topics I cover:

  • The non-academic job market for STEM PhDs
  • Skills required of PhDs for nonacademic jobs
  • Making industry internships work for the PhD and PI
  • Counseling and networking resources for nonacademically-bound PhDs
  • Supporting non-academic career PhDs emotionally and behaviorally
  • Managing academic and nonacademic career PhDs in the same lab
  • Managing the counseling and mentoring process with myIDP
  • Sharing experiences and challenges in mentoring nonacademic career PhDs

 The tools and topics of this workshop are targeted to PIs who embrace (or at least accept) nonacademic career choices for their STEM graduate students and postdocs. The workshop is not a discussion of the appropriateness of a graduate education for nonacademic career candidates.

If you are interested in learning more about this workshop or in reviewing the slides, please contact me.

And here is a link to career planning resources for PhDs.

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